Prospectus

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Human-Agent Interaction

Course
2024-2025

Admission Requirements

Introduction to Programming (course).

Without having passed this course, participation is not possible.

Description

Robots and other intelligent agents are playing an increasing role in our society. Think about chatbots, telephone bots, robots in education at school, and robots in airports or restaurants, and even elderly with dementia. Some of these technologies even serve a social function for example as companions. But how do you actually program or script human-agent interaction (HAI)? How do you ensure a pleasant dialogue? How do you respond to a human? How do you measure what a human thinks, and how do you do it in a smart way so that the human doesn't find it annoying? Often, developing a pleasant interaction means dealing with different AI techniques, all of which are powerfull but not perfect. Further, novel techniques such as LLMs and TTS change the way we interact with AI rapidly. In this course, you will learn how to shape and program the interaction between humans and intelligent agent by making use of AI techniques,copnversational principles, and different modalities, and you learn how to evaluate your design using test subjects using an appropriate experimental setup.

Recommended prior knowledge:

  • Human cognition (Course: Intro Cognitive Science)

  • Programming, Python, (Course: Introduction to programming)

Course Objectives

  1. Remember and understand the different theoretical concepts underlying Human agent interaction
  2. Apply these theoretical concepts in the design of in interactive agent
  3. Implement the design using suitable technology including but not limited to social robots, chat bots, virtual agents, TTS, STT, computer vision, etc...
  4. Analyse and evaluate the implemented design using an appropriate experimental setup with human test subjects.
  5. Collaborate as a group.

Timetable

In MyTimetable, you can find all course and programme schedules, allowing you to create your personal timetable. Activities for which you have enrolled via MyStudyMap will automatically appear in your timetable.

Additionally, you can easily link MyTimetable to a calendar app on your phone, and schedule changes will be automatically updated in your calendar. You can also choose to receive email notifications about schedule changes. You can enable notifications in Settings after logging in.

Questions? Watch the video, read the instructions, or contact the ISSC helpdesk.

Note: Joint Degree students from Leiden/Delft need to combine information from both the Leiden and Delft MyTimetables to see a complete schedule. This video explains how to do it.

Mode of Instruction

Lectures: On-site.
Project: On-site (lab) and in Robot lab: a group project

Assessment Method

Exam (individual) (50%) (must be >=5 to pass course)
Project (group project) (50%) (must be >=5 to pass course)

passing the course means average grade >=5.5

The instructor will inform the students about when the review and debriefing of the exam takes place.

Exam is held half-way the course. You must pass the exam >=5 to be able to continue the course. If you fail the first time, there is one resit two weeks later.

There is no resit possibility for the project.

Reading List

Bartneck et al. "Human-Robot Interaction: An Introduction." (online! dont buy it)
Selected papers and articles referenced during class.

Registration

As a student, you are responsible for enrolling on time through MyStudyMap.

In this short video, you can see step-by-step how to enrol for courses in MyStudyMap.
Extensive information about the operation of MyStudyMap can be found here.

There are two enrolment periods per year:

  • Enrolment for the fall opens in July

  • Enrolment for the spring opens in December

See this page for more information about deadlines and enrolling for courses and exams.

Note:

  • It is mandatory to enrol for all activities of a course that you are going to follow.

  • Your enrolment is only complete when you submit your course planning in the ‘Ready for enrolment’ tab by clicking ‘Send’.

  • Not being enrolled for an exam/resit means that you are not allowed to participate in the exam/resit.

Contact

Education coordinator LIACS bachelors

Remarks

Software
Starting from the 2024/2025 academic year, the Faculty of Science will use the software distribution platform Academic Software. Through this platform, you can access the software needed for specific courses in your studies. For some software, your laptop must meet certain system requirements, which will be specified with the software. It is important to install the software before the start of the course. More information about the laptop requirements can be found on the student website.